How 13 MCU Actors Reacted The First Time They Saw Their Costumes

7. Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man)

Iron Man 2008
Marvel Studios

In recent MCU movies, the various suits worn by Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man have become so crazy, that it would be impossible to do them practically.

But back when the MCU first started out in 2008, the franchise obviously wasn't the proven box-office juggernaut that it is today, and as a result, the creatives had to use those expensive CGI effects a bit more sparingly.

That's according to Downey Jr himself, who opened up about his early experiences with the original Iron Man suit on David Letterman's Netflix talk show, My Next Guest.

Noting that Marvel "wanted to spend as little as they could" on CGI suits, the actor explained that he had to wear a full practical costume while shooting the first Iron Man movie - and unfortunately for him, that wasn't really a comfortable experience.

This is because the helmet he wore actually had real LED lights built into it, which ended up blinding him whenever it closed shut. And since, y'know, being able to see properly is an important part of his job, he wasn't too thrilled about that.

Understandably then, Downey Jr completely rejected the notion of wearing a real helmet for the final Avengers movies.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!